The Nurse's Christmas Gift by Tina Beckett

Author:Tina Beckett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

MAX SAT ON the stairs, listening to his parents argue.

Again.

For the first time in his fifteen years he was scared about what might happen to him. Would they leave him here by himself?

‘I am going on that cruise, whether you come with me or not.’

His dad’s angry voice carried easily, just as it always did. Even if Max had been upstairs in his room, he would have heard those words.

‘And what about Maxwell?’

‘What about him? If you’re worried, ask your aunt Vanessa to come and stay with him. I’m sure she’ll be happy to lounge around the pool and do nothing.’

‘Doug, that’s not fair.’

‘What’s not fair about it? I consider it an equitable trade. I worked hard for this bonus, and I’m not going to give it up.’

There was a pause, and he held his breath as he waited for his mother’s answer. ‘Okay, I’ll ask her. But we can’t keep doing this. Vanessa has accused me more than once of not wanting him.’

‘Just ask her.’

No reassurance that his parents actually did want him. They never took him on any of their so-called trips.

His hands tightened into fists as they rested on his knees. Then he slowly got up from his spot and crept back up the stairs. To pretend he didn’t care.

Except when he got to his room and opened the door there was someone already in there. A woman...crouched on the floor beside his bed, crying. She looked up. Blue eyes met his.

Annabelle!

Suddenly he was grown up and his childhood bedroom morphed into the bathroom of their London flat. Anna held a small plastic stick in one hand, her eyes red and swollen. When he went to kneel down beside her to comfort her, she floated away. Through the door. Down the stairs, where everything was now eerily quiet. No matter how hard he tried to reach her, she kept sliding further and further away, until she was a tiny blip on the horizon. Then poof! She was gone. Leaving him all alone. Just as his parents had.

Max’s eyes popped open and encountered darkness. He blinked a couple of times, a hand going to his chest, which was slick with sweat.

God. A dream.

He sat up and shoved the covers down, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

Well, hell!

He didn’t need a dream to tell him what he already knew.

But maybe his subconscious had needed to send him a clear and pointed message about going to that Christmas party with Anna: that he needed to tread very, very carefully.

* * *

Baby Hope was still holding her own. And he’d finally shaken off the remnants of that dream he’d had that morning.

He’d also received some positive news about the accident victims they’d treated a couple of days ago. Several of the patients had already been released to go home, and the rest of them were expected to recover. Sarah, who’d been one of the most badly injured, might have to have surgery to stabilise the sternal fracture.

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